Skywatch - Geography maketh the man

We are an open, welcoming, friendly bunch, we who live in this city by the sea. And how would we be otherwise, with scenes like this at our doorstep. Not for us the continuous pall of grey mist, and early close to days which greet others. I wonder if we acknowledge it enough: our debt to this drowned valley.

Elizabeth Farrelly, writing in the SMH this morning argued:

A good harbour, like a good city, relies on connectivity. The water is great. In Sydney's case, the topography is also great. That's nature.

But what makes nature into a great harbour is culture. It's the transitional fringe, the incremental embroidery of wharfs, slipways, seawalls, steps, cafes, platforms, boathouses, chandleries, shipwrights, moorings and (if you really must) marinas that make a harbour. Sydney Harbour has a grand tradition of this stuff - working, industrial harbour furniture much of it, but also the canvas dinghies, packet boats, watermen's wherries, tugs and fishers and coal lighters and wild 18-footers and container ships.

Both photos are of Watson's Bay: looking from it to the city; looking down into, and across it.

This is my contribution to the Skywatch Community.

At the going down of the sun

The city from 'Doyles on the Beach' at Watson's Bay. Time lapse: 7:39pm, 7:45pm, 7:47pm.

The possibility of imagination

Watsons Bay library is a branch of the Woollahra Municipal library. Public libraries in NSW are a function of our third tier of government, local or municipal government. The other tiers of government in Australia are the federal goverment (which is based in Canberra), and the state governments, of which there are six.


The Watsons Bay library is very small and only open Tuesdays and Thursdays. However, it has an aspect that is drop dead gorgeous. To take the two photos on either side of this text, all I had to do was turn around. The library has a fenced in grassed area for spreading rugs and parking strollers, and is attached to a small cafe. And today was about 20C in the midst of autumn. Can you see the city back down the harbour, and the Harbour Bridge peeking above the hill on the right? It was very smokey for some reason today.


My 10 month-old grand-daughter has her own library card, which means that my daughter is able to borrow up to 40 books at any given time! Alannah is able to turn pages and lift Spot's flaps. The other morning, when Kirsten went to get her up, she was sitting in her cot turning pages of a book she had retrieved from a table through the bars of the cot. So important to have an imagination that is open to being stretched ...

Discretely scarlet

More boys out and about

Oh dear, International Womens' Day and here I am featuring boys - again! Well that is the way the cookie crumbles. Not sure that I agree with quotas to correct imbalances.

The climbing tree is a Fig down on the foreshore at Watson's Bay. The cricket pitch is on the main parade ground at Victoria Barracks. Both shots taken this past Sunday.

For young boys, summer never fades

This boy and his younger brother had a wonderful time, flicking sand and water at each other, and trying to run like billie-oh through the shallows to escape - with predictable, and eagerly anticipated, results.


Once again, taken at Watson's Bay, but this time closer to the wharf from where the smell of fish'n'chips was sending me beserk!

The last gasps of summer

I did not know if my figure in the landscape was male or female. I did not know if the gulls were being whispered to, or the harbour swell. What I read was the 'oneness' between man and nature. We can do it sometimes, you know.

Taken, on this first weekend in Autumn, at Watson's Bay harbourside beach, which is immediately inside South Head.

Her jewel sea

Roberto was expectant, he could not settle, he wanted their arrival complete, for them to be seated, for his eyes to feast upon their love. He had shared this evening with them every year for the previous fifteen, they were as family to him. He fussed over them, he smoothed their every wrinkle, he gave to them an attention that he spared for few others. They allowed him now full reign over the menu, over the quantities, over the progress. They granted him this in appreciation. And, yes, in love.

He quivered at their history, at the sixty-five years, at the family that spread organically into the community. He paced the parlour, inspecting his nails, brushing a mote from the pressed seam of his trouser. He roused with the growing bustle in the foyer, they were here, flanked by three generations of sons.

His bow circumscribed his deep affection.


A member of the Weekend Reflections community.